


Favorite Color

by Euphorion



Category: Campaign (Podcast), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Casual Sex, Cyborg Junk, Injury Recovery, M/M, Oral Sex, Pining, Wire Play, alien junk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 18:00:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19750906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: The guy was in a mechanic's jumpsuit, arms tied around his waist, and a white sleeveless tank streaked with grease. He was Chiss, Zero noted with surprise, his blue skin and red eyes pretty unmistakable. He pulled a stool across the floor toward Zero's pathetic, heaped self, and held out a hand. "Zevowc," he said, in an accent that was neither the standard Phindian drawl nor the clipped speech patterns of the unknown regions. “Found you on the floor of the hangar bay, so I dragged you back here.”Zero shook his hand awkwardly from his half-curled position on the floor. “Why?”"Looked like you were in pretty bad shape," Zevowc said, “and near enough machine for me to be some help with that.”Zero raised his eyebrows, and then realized he couldn’t actually do that without being seen. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”Zevowc gave him a sardonic look. “Sure, you could say that,” he said, “or you could say I got an appraiser’s eye, and you’re packing about a hundred thousand credits worth of custom work, and I figure you either have cash to throw around yourself, or someone invested enough in you being able to use your legs who will.”





	Favorite Color

The world returned to Zero in strange, disconnected flickers. He remembered pacing the length of Phindar Station and into the warren of parked shuttles and shipping crates, the signal of his quarry a blinking blip on his HUD. She was some Twi’lek scientist, sniffing too close to some Force stuff someone didn’t want her finding. Easy prey. 

He licked cracked, bloody lips. _Easy._ He couldn’t feel his damn legs.

He remembered rounding a corner. He remembered being distracted—pissed off by something Blue had said back on the ship, before he’d taken this easy job to give himself something to do. But the details escaped him, fizzed into a worrying nothingness behind his left ear. He was staring at a ceiling. Not in the shipping bay; not out on the main station, either. He tried to push himself up on his elbows but found something was really wrong with his spine. There was no pain, though. Which probably meant there was something _really_ wrong with his spine.

His face ached, dully; his nose was likely broken, but that was easy to identify and suppress; layered over it was a weird prickling, a feeling of motion where there should be none, an extra awareness of air, and he realized with a start that his mask was gone.

He remembered something slamming into his helmet with impressive strength. A pipe-wrench, maybe. Remembered trying to get his arm up and in her way but he’d been staggered, and then something had slammed into his head again, and something had caught, in his side, dragged backward, and _torn._

Something moved to his left. 

He might not be able to sit up properly, but his shoulder shifted and he hauled his arm upright. The muscles in his stomach still worked, enough for him to train his blaster-arm on the figure turning from the desk at the side of the room.

“Hey! Woah, there, buddy.” The figure held up a sky-blue pair of hands. "Just tryin' to help." 

Zero lowered his arm and stared at him. "Where am I?" He frowned, looking around. "Who are you?"

The guy was in a mechanic's jumpsuit, arms tied around his waist, and a white sleeveless tank streaked with grease. He was Chiss, Zero noted with surprise, his blue skin and red eyes pretty unmistakable. He pulled a stool across the floor toward Zero's pathetic, heaped self, and held out a hand. "Zevowc," he said, in an accent that was neither the standard Phindian drawl nor the clipped speech patterns of the unknown regions. “Found you on the floor of the hangar bay, so I dragged you back here.” 

Zero shook his hand awkwardly from his half-curled position on the floor. “Why?”

"Looked like you were in pretty bad shape," Zevowc said, “and near enough machine for me to be some help with that.”

Zero raised his eyebrows, and then realized he couldn’t actually do that without being seen. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

Zevowc gave him a sardonic look. “Sure, you could say that,” he said, “or you could say I got an appraiser’s eye, and you’re packing about a hundred thousand credits worth of custom work, and I figure you either have cash to throw around yourself, or someone invested enough in you being able to use your legs who will.”

Zero laughed, a little bitter. “Yeah,” he said, “ _invested_ is one word for it.” He considered his options, which were approximately none, and sighed. “Go ahead,” he said. “Patch me up, we can pay.”

Zevowc nodded to himself and leaned down, picking Zero up from floor and setting him haphazardly on the stool. Zero sat, feeling distinctly undignified and desperately grateful no one he knew could see him.

“Might help if I knew what you were supposed to look like,” Zevowc said, squinting critically at him, and Zero swallowed a frustrated _I’m supposed to look like a person,_ because—was he, anymore? And what the hell did that mean, anyway? It was a wide, wide galaxy out there. His Gank definition of personhood had always been wrapped up in _pack,_ and if that was the criteria, he’d been doing a piss-poor job of being a person for a long time.

“Hang on,” he said. “You got a datapad?"

Zevowc snorted. “‘Course.” he crossed to the workbench at the side of the shop and retrieved something, holding it out for Zero to take.

Zero glanced at it without taking it, then concentrated. The hollowness behind his ear was fading, probably just his shit resetting after the forced removal of his HUD. His eye was still connected to the holo-net, though, and it didn’t take more than a couple twitches of his fingers to identify the IP of the datapad and slip past its minimal security. He closed his eyes and dragged an abridged version of his own schematics over to the device, simultaneously setting himself an alarm so later he’d remember to remotely delete them. This guy seemed harmless enough, but there was no reason to leave that kind of information just laying around.

Zevowc grunted as the screen lit up, pulling the pad back to look at it. “Neat trick,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Zero, “but you should see the shit my boss can do.”

He regretted it immediately, mentioning Blue, doubly regretted it when Zevowc gave him an—indeed—appraising look. “He the one who souped you up?”

“Yeah,” Zero muttered, hoping he would leave it at that. It wouldn’t do for this guy to know who he was, if it could be avoided; it wouldn’t do for _anyone_ to know Agent Zero, bodyguard to the youngest-ever Imperial Minister, got the shit beat out of him by some lone Twi’lek scientist. 

Thankfully, Zevowc just hummed and turned to study his schematics.

Zero took the opportunity to look around the shop. It was cozy and cluttered, clearly as much living-space as work-space. He wondered idly how a Chiss had ended up here. Phindar was Outer Rim, sure, but it wasn’t really the kind of place he’d expect an outlaw to end up, not and _stay._ Then again, he had no real sense of why a Chiss might leave the—whatever their thing was called. Accession?

He found himself studying Zevowc as much as his space, his eyes catching on the curve of his biceps, the set of his shoulders, the flattering cinch of the jumpsuit at his waist.

"Whoever was trying to take you out wasn't trying to kill you," Zevowc noted, and Zero brought his eyes back to his face.

"I guessed," said Zero, "from how she left me passed out and not dead."

Zevowc shook his head. "More than that," he said. "She severed your spine, but only the parts that are fully mechanical. Less painful, easier to reattach, and no possibility of you losing all your precious blood."

Zero narrowed his eyes. "Huh." Was it mercy, or strategy? A warning? He thought about what Blue would have done if he hadn’t shown up to meet him back at the ship. Panic, probably. Throw a fit. And then what? Send some of Synox’s boys out after him? Give up, eventually? Mourn? Realize he had to start again? 

He tried to pull himself back from the cliff’s edge of trying to decide how Blue would feel if he died. What were the possible things he’d discover, if he went down that path? Either Blue would care, in that panicked, almost too-human way he did when something truly scared him, or he. Wouldn’t. Would just move on, hire someone else, someone less likely to be taken by surprise in the middle of a kriffing hanger bay because he was too distracted by the small ways Blue _already_ showed him he wouldn’t—

Zero snapped out a hand and gripped Zevowc’s bicep. “I don’t have all year,” he snapped. “I said I’d pay, get on with it.”

Zevowc blinked at him. “Pushy,” he said, “for a guy I hauled off a hangar floor outta the goodness of my heart.”

Zero got a handle on himself. “Sorry.” He muttered. “Sorry, I get upset when people dislocate my spine without asking first.”

Zevowc crinkled his red eyes at him, and Zero let him go.

“The spine really is the main thing,” the mechanic said, standing up and walking around him, “other than the broken nose, which I understand—not being a physician, but having been in a few scraps in my day—should pretty much fix itself.” He pulled a cloth from his pocket and handed it to Zero. “For the blood.”

Zero took it, automatically moistening the cloth with saliva and grooming the fur on his face. “Thanks,” he said. “And yeah, the nose is fine, I already turned off my pain receptors, it should be fine in a few days.”

Zevowc chuckled. “Handy,” he said. “You really are a beautiful thing, you know that?”

Zero, to his own surprise, felt himself flush. “Thanks,” he muttered.

Zevowc did—something, Zero could feel one of his hands flat and calloused against his shoulder-blade, steadying, and he was thankful for it because whatever Zevowc did with his other hand sent a shock down his entire left side and also spider-webbing everywhere else, not pain but a sort of fizzing heated something that Zero’s brain reconciled after a moment into _pleasure,_ jolting and unexpected, and he let out a ragged, embarrassing gasp. 

Zevowc hummed, shifting his palm soothingly up over his shoulder, and peered around so he could see Zero’s face. “Sorry, did that hurt?”

Zero hissed, feeling too warm. “Not, uh, not exactly.”

Zevowc’s thick eyebrows crawled upwards. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, that can happen—I’m reattaching nerves in your spine, basically, and nerves just mean stimulus, really, and sometimes that manifests as pain.” His wide lips curled. “Sometimes, it doesn’t.”

He still had a hand on Zero’s back, and he trailed his dextrous, blunt-tipped fingers down Zero’s spine, not returning to his wound but pausing just above it, drawing tiny circles on Zero’s newly-sensitive skin. “You want me to stop?” he asked. “I could just call your boss—”

“No,” said Zero, immediate. The idea of Blue seeing him like this was like, six levels of unbearable, maybe worse than thinking about what he’d do if Zero didn’t come back at all. He had no idea what would be worse—how disappointed he would be that Zero had let himself be beaten like this, had destroyed so much of Blue’s tech, or the worry about his safety, or the idea that—god. “He would probably want to fix this himself, and that’s not, uh.” He stumbled to a stop, licking his lips. “An option.”

“Not someone you want to get your rocks off with, huh?” Zevowc asked sympathetically.

It would have been easy to just agree. But there was something nice in Zevowc’s total strangeness to him, something freeing in the fact that he’d never see him again, and Zero found himself saying, “no, actually, the opposite. But.” He stopped, letting his silence speak for him.

Zevowc’s face cleared in understanding. “It’s hard,” he said, “working that closely with someone like that. Frustrating.” His fingers starting moving again. “Not for nothing. Just so you know.” He quirked an eyebrow. “I’d be happy to relieve some of that frustration, if you want. Wouldn’t even cost you much extra.”

Zero tried to flash an emoji, then redirected the instinct into quirking an actual eyebrow. It was so weird, knowing he could see it. “You make this offer to all your clients?”

“Just the hot ones,” Zevowc said easily. “Especially if they have such a promising malfunction.”

Zero studied him. He really was gorgeous, in a open-faced sort of way, the blue skin and high cheekbones Zero had only ever seen on a distant, supercilious Grand Admiral at stupid Imperial functions transformed somehow by the fullness of his mouth and the thick muscle of his neck into a much more approachable kind of attractiveness. His frankness helped, too. So refreshing to talk to someone who was just straightforward with him.

And. Kriff it. It had been too long. Blue could deal with the extra expense. So long as he never found out what it was for.

“Yeah,” he said, “okay, let’s do this.”

Zevowc grinned. “God, I was hoping you’d say that.” 

He leaned down and gave Zero a surprisingly sweet kiss, his mouth soft, and Zero made himself relax into it. It had been so long since anyone had even been in his space like this that it was genuine work to lower his guard, to not grab Zevowc by the throat and throw him into a wall. He raised his organic hand to Zevowc’s jaw instead, running his thumb along it, down his throat, breathing in through his nose—unfiltered air, no mask—as Zevowc licked into his mouth.

When Zevowc pulled back he was smirking. “Fangs,” he said. “That’s gonna be _fun._ ” He turned his head a little to take Zero’s thumb between his lips, scraping his own teeth over the pad of it, and heat pooled in Zero’s stomach.

“Finish fixing my spine and I’ll show you how fun,” he suggested, putting a little growl into it.

Zevowc’s red eyes were pupil-less—there was none of the darkening or widening that betrayed arousal in mammalian species—but they did grow more intense, somehow, almost more saturated, and he stepped around Zero. 

The sensors in Zero’s helmet were gone but his eye still worked, and when he closed his organic one he could ‘see’ Zevowc’s heat signature behind him, watch him kneel even before he felt the slow slide of hands down his back. They paused just below the numb slash of his wound, pushing gently, and Zero complied with the unspoken suggestion, arching his back slightly, and then there was a quick twist of motion and a second spike of arousal—this one straight through him like a lance from his throat to his immediately-curling toes—made him throw his head back and groan.

Unbidden, the thought of Blue doing this resurfaced in its wake, and Zero struggled to control his breathing, struggled to focus on the real hands on his back—how big they were, how calloused. But the heat signature in his eye was too anonymous, too easy to write over, and he couldn’t stop applying the easy grace with which Zevowc went to his knees to a lankier frame—his thumb disappearing between other lips, parting for him—and then there was another odd twist and spike and Zero arched further, trembling, the nerves in his thighs coming alive. “Kriff, _Blue—_ ”

The hands paused, and then Zevowc murmured, “that’s a cute nickname.”

Zero’s face and chest burned in embarrassment. “Glad you like it,” he muttered, and then, a vicious warning to himself, _I won’t be using it again._

The next spike left him pitched forward, trembling, but with nerves alive throughout his whole body. He tried to stand, but Zevowc murmured "one sec, big boy," and unclipped something from his belt, flipping the visor around from the top of his head. Zero's synthetic eye flipped rapidly through protective settings as white light spilled around them. 

There was a ticklish, liquid heat at the small of his back, making him shift against the chair, and then it stopped, and everything felt—solid again. Properly connected, properly _his._ Zero stood, rolling his shoulders, and Zevowc let out a low whistle. "Tall fellow, aren't you?"

Zero turned, stalking up to him and not stopping. Zevowc shifted with him, licking his lips, and Zero walked him backward without touching him, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, til Zevowc's knees hit his workbench in a clattering of tools. They were pressed together, thigh to chest, and Zero could feel the hot weight of Zevowc's dick against his thigh. 

Zevowc swallowed, looking up at him. "So."

Zero leaned down and caught the breath at the end of the word in his mouth, closing his fangs around Zevowc's lower lip. He let his eyes slip shut, savoring all the different ways and places he could _feel,_ all the nerve endings and awarenesses he took for granted ‘til they were ripped away from him. The heat of Zevowc's palms on his hips as the Chiss steadied himself, moaning into Zero's mouth as they kissed open-mouthed and filthy. The pulse in the thick muscle of his neck, pinging off seven or eight different sensors in Zero's mind. He pulled back, aware through all the body language signals a body could give off how Zevowc didn't want him to—how his mouth and jaw strained after him, how his hips twisted against Zero's at the loss and anticipation of what came next. Zero felt dizzy, heady. Was this what he'd been missing, not fucking while this enhanced? Was everyone so responsive? Would anyone be so—would—

He cut the thought off, reigning in his racing mind. His internal systems were recalibrating, and he wasn't used to pulling unfiltered air through his nostrils. This hypersensitivity was temporary, just his Gank sense and his cyborg senses figuring out how to play nice again. Which meant he should take advantage while it lasted.

He finally touched Zevowc, running a hand up his throat to catch the square line of his jaw. "So," he said. "Let's see how well you do your work, mechanic."

“Well,” Zevowc protested, “it’s not exactly going to be a fair test—you didn’t let me work on your arms at all, and there’s still detailing work—”

Zero growled, tightening his hand just enough to make speaking uncomfortable, and Zevowc gasped, his hips twisting against the thigh Zero had between them. “S-sir.”

Zero ran the hand not curled around Zevowc’s throat down his chest, over the taught, tight muscles of his stomach. “What, exactly, were you offering?” he asked, his breath short, his hindbrain urging him to stop talking and sink his teeth into the smooth blue of Zevowc’s shoulder. “When you agreed to help me relieve my _tension._ ”

Zevowc’s hands rose to his head, pulling him closer, his fingers running through the short fur between Zero’s ears, petting and tugging by turns, as impatient as Zero was. “With that body? Whatever you want, gorgeous.” If his eyes had deepened before they were almost blood-red now. “You want my mouth, it’s yours. You wanna bend me over my bench, we can do that, too.”

Zero hesitated. God, being pressed all along him when he could feel this much—he wanted, he did, but it would be _too_ much, and he didn’t know—if he’d rushed the job, if some circuit weren’t properly reconnected, he hadn’t had a chance to really _assess,_ and he didn’t want to injure the guy giving him his first good time in ages because his speed calibration was off.

“Get on your knees,” he decided. “Maybe—next time. Don’t want to undo all your good work on my spine.”

Zevowc laughed and squirmed free of him, crossing in two strides to the door, which he locked. “Technically,” he said, shrugging at Zero’s look, “it’s still business hours. Not that I’d mind a certain kind of audience, but there are kids on this station.” 

“Very community-minded,” Zero said dryly, unbuckling his belt, and then Zevowc sank to his knees, and his mouth was dry for other reasons.

 _Yeah,_ he thought in a haze, as Zevowc leaned in, running his fingers over the line of Zero’s hip, fur and bone giving way to metal, and then—to what sounded like Zevowc’s pleased surprise—flesh again. “Tease,” Zero accused, as Zevowc dipped fingers between his folds. 

“Was wondering if you were self-lubricating,” Zevowc grinned, biting a little at his thigh and making Zero twist. He steadied himself with a hand on Zevowc’s head. “But I see this piece of you’s still analog.”

“Not entirely,” said Zero, and used his free hand to stroke a line upward, across the metal plate just above Zevowc’s gentle fingers, and let his dick extend.

“ _Kriff,”_ breathed Zevowc, “it _is_ my lucky day.” And then he gripped Zero’s thighs in both calloused hands, leaned in, and went to work.

 _Yeah,_ thought Zero again, in the few breathless moments he could think, this was better. It was easier, looking down at him, to keep himself here and now. Easier to know this for what it was, enjoy— _kriff_ —the way he worked his tongue, the obvious enthusiasm in the way he licked from between Zero’s folds up and along the length of his dick. He hadn’t extended it fully, but the ease with which Zevowc swallowed it down was still really—it really—it was _extraordinarily_ hot. It was like there was some data-echo of Zevowc connecting up his circuits, earlier, trapped in some loop in his head, because he could feel the swipe of his tongue against the nape of his neck, could feel the suction of his mouth in the tips of his fingers. He laughed, ragged, uniquely, critically aware of all the lines of his body where heated flesh met cool metal.

It had been a long time.

He tightened his hand in Zevowc’s hair, bucking into his mouth, and Zevowc groaned encouragingly around his dick, his eyes slipping closed so there was only a faint crimson seam under his long lashes. Zero bit his lip, fucking into his mouth in earnest. Zevowc had his other hand down the front of his jumpsuit, his arm moving in time with Zero’s thrusts, his cheeks flushed the color of Dathomirian coral. Zero could hear himself panting in the silence of the mechanic’s shop. “Kriff,” he growled, “you’re _good_ at this.”

Zevowc made a frustrated noise, his hips twisting, and scraped blunt nails up the inside of Zero’s damp thigh before slipping two fingers into him and _twisting._

That was all it took. Zero whited out, legs shaking, and barely had the wherewithal to feel embarrassed when Zevowc had to hold him up by the hips so he didn’t collapse backwards. He took a few steps back from him, when he could, leaning against the bench behind him.

Zevowc stayed on his knees, breathing hard, his lips loose and shining. As Zero looking at him, he smirked. “How’s that for a systems test, hm?”

“Extremely thorough,” Zero responded, trying to get his breathing under control. He reached out and touched Zevowc’s face, ran his fingers over his jaw. “You got a space Yelp or something where I can leave a glowing review?”

++

“—be back in a few hours,” Aava was saying, as Synox and his boys filed down the gangplank. “This shouldn’t take long.”

Across the hangar Zero caught a flash of blue muscled shoulder, a file in his memory banks _pinging_. Puzzled, he brought the recording up, and then immediately regretted it, the sound of Zevowc's low groan as Zero thrust into his mouth curling through his helmet. He closed it immediately, but Aava saw him stiffen, raising her eyebrows at him. “Everything okay?”

Zero nodded, tracking the mechanic’s heat signature as he moved between ships. “Yeah,” he said. “Just give me a second.”

He broke off from them, making it halfway across the hangar before he heard Blue say, “Where’s he going? Zero?”

He kept going, ducking under the nose of a modified X-Wing to swing up into Zevowc's space. “Hey.”

Zevowc looked surprised, unrecognizing. “Uh, hey,” and then his gaze flickered from Zero's helmet to his body. “Oh,” he said, and his lips curled. “Hi.”

Zero—wasn’t entirely sure why he'd come over here, but he hadn't expected the immediate temptation to push him back against the X-Wing and continue where they left off. Kriff, he needed to get laid more often. “Wasn't sure you'd recognize me.”

Zevowc grinned. “I would say I never forget a face, but it'd be a lie, and anyway it's not your face I remember.” He raised a hand to Zero's helmet, tilting him this way and that. “So this is what you usually look like, huh? I like it. Dangerous." He winked.

Zero shifted closer to him. "Real quick," he said, because he didn't have long—Blue would definitely send Aava or Synox after him in another second. "I have a thing, right now, but I saw you and I figured, what the kriff, do you—later‚" he put a hand on Zevowc's hip, curling his fingers in the curve of his side, "maybe I can take you up on your offer?"

Zevowc's eyes narrowed, his mouth curling in a smirk, "you want to remind me exactly—"

"Zero?"

Zero froze. Or. Or Blue wouldn't send anyone, and would stride over here himself, find Zero with his hand on Zevowc's hip, Zevowc's on his jaw, that could. Also. Be how this went.

Zevowc, thankfully, stepped back from him, a professionalism and formality drawing him up and squaring his shoulders, no doubt in reaction to Blue's ministerial garb. No _fear,_ though. Even in his vaguely panicking state Zero noticed that, didn’t know whether to file it away under _admirable_ or _suspicious._

"Minister Blue," Zero said, emphasizing the first title and desperately hoping Zevowc had forgotten his slip of the tongue. "This is Zevowc. Zevowc, uh, Minister Blue."

Blue had gone brilliant red, staring between them. "Zero—he—” he seemed to gather himself. “Cut off his hand!” He demanded.

Zero stared. Zevowc, some of the stiffness shifting, started to laugh. 

"Sorry," Zero said, " _what?"_

"He touched your face!" Blue snapped. "He—that's—assault upon my person, basically!"

"Okay, first of all," said Zero, "he touched my mask. And—"

"I have touched his face, though," Zevowc volunteered, for some horrifying reason.

" _—and even if he had_ ," Zero continued, flashing Zevowc a series of the most Do Not emojis he could think of (stop sign, red exclamation points, raised hand, praying hands), "that wouldn't be an assault on _you,_ Blue, how even--"

"You," said Blue icily, "are my personal bodyguard. You are currently on duty as such on a mission on this planet."

"Right," said Zero, "with you so far."

"While you're on the job, any action taken against you is an action against me!" Blue insisted. 

"Aaand that's where you lose me," Zero said.

Zevowc had drifted closer while Zero was staring in disbelief at Blue, and he sidled even closer now. "If I said you had a perfect body, baby, would you take action against me?" he murmured, low and amused.

"You are _not_ helping," Zero hissed, fighting the urge to either blush visibly at him or laugh, both of which would be disastrous.

"You—get away from him," Blue spluttered. He waved his cane at them as if he could Force-push some space between them.

"Aren't I?" Zevowc muttered, low enough that only Zero could hear him. "Gotta say, he's not what I expected."

Zero blinked and matched his volume. "You remembered—then what—"

Zevowc shrugged. "Sometimes jealousy is the grease needed on a wheel's been stuck for too long."

“I am _right here,_ ” Blue snapped. “You will _not_ ignore me.”

Zevowc waited, a warm presence at Zero's side, not touching, quite. Inviting.

 _Kriff it,_ thought Zero.

He slung an arm around Zevowc's shoulders, pulling him against his side. Blue's eyes widened. "Your theory assumed Zevowc here was touching me without my consent," he said. "He wasn't. No action was taken against me, thus no action was taken against you."

"But—" Blue's throat bobbed. "He said he’s touched your _face—_ ”

"He has," Zero said, truthfully, though it felt weird—he didn't usually take off his helmet for his few hookups, and he probably wouldn't have let Zevowc see his face if his helmet hadn't been physically shattered at the time. He wished Zevowc hadn't said anything. The sex stuff was one thing, that had happened, after all, and Blue genuinely had no right to be upset about it. But his face—it was different, that intimacy. It felt like misrepresenting something, showing an open door where in fact there was none. And things had been. Different, with Blue, lately, different than last time he was here. They were friends, he knew they were friends, and sometimes he thought even—

He shook himself and made another choice. Not exactly relenting, but—softening. He didn’t _like_ the look on Blue’s face. He was pretty sure when you made someone jealous, you were supposed to like it. “You remember when we ran into Lyntel’luroon the first time, back before she was running around with that Valentine motherkriffer and Synox’s deserter?”

Blue looked at him, some of the blankness shifting into caution. “When _you_ ran into her,” he said.

Zero sighed, rueful. “When she ran into me, really,” he admitted, “several times, with a pipe wrench and what I think was some kind of vibro-saw. Really did a number on me.” His arm was still around Zevowc, who was—bless him—letting him run the show. “You remember, it took days to remake my helmet. Zevowc here patched me up.” He ran a hand down Zevowc’s back in quiet gratitude and let him go.

Blue relaxed, though not entirely. “Oh,” he said, looking disgruntled. “I see.”

“And then I slept with him,” Zero added, watching his face carefully. Take away the intimacy variable, test on the sexual one. That was science, probably. He told his heart, sternly, to calm down.

All of the constantly moving, constantly flicking, shifting, shaking pieces of Blue’s body went still. His hand was white-knuckled but steady on his cane. The click of his eyes from Zero to Zevowc and back was almost audible. “I see,” he said, in an odd, distant tone. He turned on his heel. “I’ll let you finish your conversation,” he said, “and then you’ll accompany me to meet our contact.”

“Of course,” Zero said automatically, but Blue was already halfway back to the ship.

Zevowc let out a low whistle. “Well.”

Zero turned to him. “Thanks,” he said, “I—I think, I’m not entirely sure what that did to him.”

“One thing’s sure,” Zevowc said, “that was not the reaction of someone _not_ invested in your sex life.”

Zero cracked up. “Invested,” he repeated, and then subsided.

“I remembered what I offered,” Zevowc said, rolling his shoulders, “and it’s with regret that I gotta tell you I do have a boyfriend now.” He shrugged. “He probably wouldn’t mind if I brought you home, he’s not stupid and rigs like you don’t come our way every day—”

“Please,” Zero deadpanned, “my modesty.”

Zevowc smirked at him. “But,” he continued, “joining a couple in their shared bed might not be the vibe you were going for re: your stress relief later.”

Zero thought about it, briefly, but knew he was right. “Yeah,” he said regretfully. “Besides, I—” he glanced across the bay to the Bluebird, to the ramrod-straight back of Blue. 

“You might get a better offer?”

Zero sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never kriffing know.” But maybe he knew a little bit more than he had this morning, and somehow, that helped immensely. “Maybe.”

“Whole hell of a lot can come of a _maybe,_ ” said Zevowc, and held out a hand. “Good luck.”

Zero gripped it, sending him a kissy-face emoji, and Zevowc laughed.

He strode back across the bay to the Bluebird and brushed a knuckle up Blue’s spine. “Hey.” 

Blue spun, defensive, like Zero might be holding a knife. His eyes were almost manically wide. “I—hello.”

Zero glanced around. “Aav’ head out already? Shouldn’t we be going?”

“Yes,” snapped Blue, and took a moment, gathering himself. “Is your friend—will you be seeing him later?”

Zero smiled to himself, his heart uncertain and light. “Nah,” he said, and bumped his shoulder against Blue’s. “You’ve got my full attention.”

“I should hope so,” Blue shot back, but all of a sudden he was like a puppet with his strings cut, almost ridiculous in his relief. Zero had to resist the urge to pick up his hands and drop them again just to see if he actually had the energy to keep them in the air. He had to resist the urge to do a lot of things with Blue’s hands. “As you already acknowledged, we’re _working._ ”

It was the same wall he always put up, the same stabilizing element resisting any chemical change Zero might try to introduce, but his blue eyes were all over Zero and there was no distance, really; no shift in anything but appearance. Noise. Propaganda. Zero waited, letting him reset his face, his manner, abstract his mind from his body and regain his professional calm. But just before he’d finished twitching his robes into place, Zero tucked his hands into his pockets and said casually, “you know, you’d have my full attention even if we weren’t.”

Flushed, determinedly ignoring his bodyguard, Minister Blue strode out to meet their Imperial contact, and Agent Zero fell in two steps behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, sometimes you're on twitter talking about Zero's favorite Carly Rae Jepsen song and how Blue misinterprets it to be about Thrawn, and then cut to a year later and you've written 5400 words of Zero/Zevowc smut and zeblue angst. It's not my fault.
> 
> Also this is fully 100% my headcanon for how Lyn has already having tangled with Zero and Blue once before they meet in kanan. Remember her fuckin' brawn stat? Yeah, me too, every day.


End file.
